Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Under Obama, Better to Commit a War Crime Than Expose One

by Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis, Dissident Voice,  March 7, 2011

Bradley Manning is accused of humiliating the political establishment by revealing the complicity of top U.S. officials in carrying out and covering up war crimes. In return for his act of conscience, the U.S. government is holding him in abusive solitary confinement, humiliating him and trying to keep him behind bars for life.

The lesson is clear, and soldiers take note: You’re better off committing a war crime than exposing one.

An Army intelligence officer stationed in Kuwait, the 23-year-old Manning – outraged at what he saw – allegedly leaked tens of thousands of State Department cables to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. These cables show U.S. officials covering up everything from U.S. tax dollars funding child rape in Afghanistan to illegal, unauthorized bombings in Yemen. Manning is also accused of leaking video evidence of U.S. pilots gunning down more than a dozen Iraqis in Baghdad, including two journalists for Reuters, and then killing a father of two who stopped to help them. The father’s two young children were also severely wounded.

Continues >>

1 comment:

Tao Dao Man said...

The deal for O not to go after the C/W crew was made before he became president.
This is disgraceful.
But it was expected that O would not hold these war criminals responsible.
After all, O does not want to set any kind of precedent.

I only refer to Obama as O. I will not give him the respect of calling him by his full name.